Saturday, February 18, 2017

Where Canada's immigrants come from

There was a fascinating graphic in today's Globe and Mail showing Canada's immigration history from Confederation to date:
There, encapsulated in one image, is the ever-decreasing reliance on British immigrants (blue), which made up the vast majority of Canadian immigrants for so many decades, and almost all of it in the country's early days. There is the substantial contribution to our population from the USA (orange), although largely in the first half of the 20th century, and the even larger numbers arriving from Continental Europe (yellow) over the same period and even more so after the Second World War. And there is our increasing reliance on immigration from the Caribbean and Central and South America (purple) since the 1970s, and also from Africa, West Asia and the Middle East (green). And, finally, and perhaps most glaringly, the huge and rapid increase in Asian immigration (red) since the 1980s, to the extent that this represents fully 40% of Canadian immigration today.
The image shows the fascinating, and still unfolding, story of how Canada came to be what it is today. As one of the dwindling, but still substantial, element of British immigrants myself, I find it intriguing to see these trends unfurl.

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